The Secret Countries
by Senri
Summary: A series of unrelated Naruto drabbles. Rating and warnings at the head of each chapter. Chapter 8: Kakuzu in human lands, finding a job.
1. Team 8: Enemy

Genre: Gen/Angst  
Warnings: T  
Fandom: Naruto.  
Notes: Team 8, for Naruto100's theme "enemy".

* * *

It's touch-and-go finding a safe place to operate on the battlefield, but somehow they manage it. Kiba and Akamaru face in different directions to stand guard; Hinata lowers Shino from her shoulders to the ground and cuts away the bloodied tatters of his jacket with a kunai. Her naked eyes tell her he's hurt bad, but she turns byakugan on anyway to check the full extent of the damage: liver partly ruptured, kidney bruised, worst of all one of the internal paths for the kikai has split and the bugs are swarming to the break site. She glimpses broken armor, pale innards oozing, legs kicking weakly before she turns off her bloodline, turns away, shudders.

Shino's heels dig into the turf; she can hear him grinding his teeth. Pale fingers twist in the grass. She swallows. "Hinata, hurry," Kiba says, the words erupting from his throat more as a bark than a shout. Not angry at her but she can see his dirty face and that he's scared, underneath.

She switches the byakugan back on, glances into Shino's body again. The kikai are trying to patch the break; they've cleared the broken bodies of their brethren who died in the blow and now are trying to staunch the flow of blood coming into the kikai road. If she leaves it too long Shino will bleed out inside.

Her throat clicks when she swallows. "Where do I start," she whispers, fluttering her hand over his side, his carved-up stomach. What if she doesn't do the right thing - what if she does do the right thing, and he dies anyway? "Shino..."

"Go," he whispers. She can see blood bubbling up on his lips, and the shadows of his eyes under his glasses. Trusting her.

She swallows hard, again. Closes her eyes. Nothing changes.

She picks a spot, and starts.

4/14/08

(_you're your own worst enemy_)


	2. Sasori&Deidara: In Suna

Genre: Gen  
Warnings: G  
Fandom: Naruto.  
Notes: Sasori and Deidara, in Suna. Old fic is very, very old. I think when I wrote this I was still uncertain whether Deidara's scope could actually be removed; that or I just thought it would be very awesome if it was really kind of grafted to his head. At any rate, here it is.

* * *

Deidara hates the land of sand the moment he sets foot in it: the featureless dunes, the grit that homesteads in his eyes, his nose, the back of his throat. No wonder danna killed everyone and got out, he thinks. I'd start raving here too.

His scope is usually so lovely and dependable. It glides along like an eel in the rocks, telling him things. The first time the grit clogs it up and plunges one hemisphere of vision into darkness Deidara is so shocked he thinks he has died. Is dying. Is under attack and has failed to realize it. Sasori has to stop him from hurtling off on a clay bird. He makes Deidara sit still, and opens up half of Deidara's head and tinkers. Patiently, he wipes everything down until it all meshes again.

"You must take better care of things in the desert, idiot," he says, in the same long-suffering desiccated tone he always uses when he thinks Deidara has been particularly stupid. "Suna is not like other countries. Suna is only indifferent to its ninja. It does not love them."

Sasori has performed meticulous maintenance or Hiruko morning and night since they entered his homeland. Deidara was never to Suna as a loyal Iwa-nin, and in his partnership with Sasori they have avoided the place. Watching his clay birds sweep into the sunset gives Deidara a new angle on his partner: humans are as small as fleas here. As insignificant. They eke out lives like lichen stippled on a rock.

It must have been easy to want immortality here. In this place where every growth is paid for with gallons of blood, swollen eyes, blisters and scabs and peeling sunburned skin. So that even now in his life-without-life Sasori thirsts. The desert is still with him, inside.


	3. Kakuzu&Hidan: Honeyed Sweetness

Genre: Gen  
Warnings: T (language)  
Fandom: Naruto.  
Notes: Kakuzu and Hidan in an old place. Prompt was "honeyed sweetness".

* * *

Old age makes him remember the early days as better than they were. The way the snows closed over everything like a funeral shroud, and the screaming winds off the bay whipping up powder like a fine spray of needles: that recedes. The summers lengthen, become more sun-dappled and longer, green and hot. Sunshine blows in with the sea breeze, and the trees in the orchard-groves are heavy with sweet, sticky fruits. In memory he dives for pearls, a short blade clamped between his teeth.

It looks scruffy here now. Like a dog forgotten in the yard long enough to become feral, so when the master stretches a hand it shows its white teeth. Kakuzu must relearn the paths. The huts have caved in like crushed skulls. Grave markers lean haphazardly here and there. The cemetery had overfilled at the end.

The cliffs are as hostile as he remembers: grey and deadly. The ocean slaps at their bottoms, and pebbles rattle on the beach as the waves turn.

He stands for a moment at the edge, remembering how the friend from his youth had taken a jump off here, on a dare, and disappeared forever. It was so easy. Now his bones must be minerals in the water.

The orchards are still here, though the trees are stunted, strangling each other and overcome. Once he felt so small in here, and peaceful; peaches still wax heavy on the branches. Some of them have fallen and their sweet perfume thickens the air.

Hidan gathers them in armfuls. Juice from where the flesh has split gleams on his robe like clarified butter. He drops them carelessly on the ground where they're camping, chooses one and rips into it, teeth flashing wolfishly. Juice slips down his chin. With his ring hand, Hidan wipes it away.

The leaves around them breathe like waiting ghosts. Kakuzu prepares a fire. He's fairly sure his partner will be sick in an hour or so.

"Fucking delicious," Hidan says hoarsely, near to choking on one exceptionally large bite of fruit. "I bet you stole these farmers blind when you were just a little snot."

"The trees were ours," Kakuzu mutters. "My family's." Off limits, because they were for trade and tithe, except on special occasions. How have they done so well, now, with so little tending? The land has forgotten his village. His family. He's the only one who remembers this place as it once was.

"Oh hey," Hidan barks jovially. He kicks back, pulping a peach in his ring hand; the juice rolls between his fingers, soaks the sleeve of his robe so it sticks to his forearm. He's absolutely sopping with the juice. "Hey, so these are _yours_, right? Your fucking property. So dive in."

Kakuzu frowns at him, at the furrowed pits dotting the ground. It is so very obvious someone has been here. This is not a very ninja-like campground at all. Then again, does he really care? They'll be out of here soon enough.

After a moment he does take a peach. The juice is viscous, as sweet as he remembers.

2/8/08.


	4. Kakuzu&Konan: The Moon Never Beams

Genre: Gen  
Warnings: G  
Fandom: Naruto.  
Notes: In my fanon… well, it's not a romance, but these two have a different perception of each other than anyone else quite has of them. Prompt was "the moon never beams without bringing me dreams".

* * *

In her village, the stars are almost always hidden; Pein keeps the sky masked with rain clouds most of the time. The pavement stays slick and wet, the canals run high, the moon barely makes a dent through the frowning clouds, and unlucky citizens scuffle about on the streets below. They push for the limited space under the awnings and squint into the bright, sulfurous lamps, all so very far away from her.

Konan glances out across the jumbled city, and then decisively closes the blinds. There's nothing interesting or exceptional going on out there. Besides, she can hear the kettle whistling.

She pours two delicate, chipped cups full of steaming water and drops the tea bags in; her guest isn't here yet, but he's punctual. She expects him in a minute or two. The sugar is already on her little table, and cream. Her radio is silent and the pipes are knocking in the walls, and there's no music, but the long susurrus of rain and the sweet damp encroaching darkness.

The door is unlocked because God's Angel has nothing to fear, in this, her heavenly demesne, an apartment with a front room and a kitchen, a bathroom and a bedroom. She keeps potted plants on the balcony but rarely ranges outdoors while the rain is running. The water won't cripple her, but it is irritating, and her live flowers flourish in the moist atmosphere. She wouldn't grow plants that needed coddling.

The door scrapes along the floor. Konan chose this apartment on purpose, with the squeaky windows, the rattly door, because she's the lone lady in a pack of elite missing-nin and she wanted to know when people were coming in and out. The door scrapes closed, her guest pauses to politely remove his shoes, and then she hears floorboards creaking as he walks across the room. The blinds screek open again. She carries the cups out, one in each hand; they're almost painfully hot against her palms. Kakuzu is looking out the window across the city. His austere, harsh face is already bared; his inverted eyes are mysterious in the non-light.

She sets the cups carefully on her table, and kneels there, watching him. The windows are open and rain spits through, dampening Kakuzu's face and hair, filming him with a liquid silver skin. That water should halo him, that his skin should be moistened and slick, it looks right, natural. He turns around and regards her seriously, and in doing so resembles a kappa, or some kind of ocean demigod. Such a plethora of monsters and deities they are. Konan and Kakuzu, the quiet ones, the slow. Patience, silence, and regard; it was natural that they'd eventually draw together at times like this.

Even his voice is deep basso, velveteen and slow. Not a human voice but the voice of the plunging ocean. "Do you mind?" he says, tipping his head towards the opened blinds, the windows open like mouths. Konan shakes her head and then gestures lightly towards the steaming mug.

He's a very tall man, with a significant height advantage to her even when he's sitting neatly across the table. He turns his cup, dunks the tea bag a couple of times and then removes it, adds a surprising amount of sugar to the brew and drinks with her. Silence fills up the room like the smell of rain. Neither of them feels much of a need to speak with the other, but eventually Kakuzu breaks the silence. "How goes the cause?" he asks dryly.

"The civil war is over," Konan tells him. "Akatsuki is the master of Rain." For years, since her scrappy, desperate childhood, she's been waiting to say those words. Nagato at last will protect his country. God has ascended to his throne, with his angel below him. Kakuzu's lower eyelids pull up a little.

"Of course."

"Of course," she echoes. The Falls-nin is a cynic, he's too old to be anything but. "Of course. It's been so long since you've visited Rain, Kakuzu-kun. I am sorry that it must be for a new partner." She doesn't add, _again_. They are friends of sorts and can take little liberties with each other, and for fairness can refrain from taking little liberties as well. After all, they are both patient, and kind.

"I'm not," he says, plunged abruptly into an ill-tempered contemplation. "The man was a fool. He deserved what he got." Somewhere, Konan knows, the dead man's heart is still beating, nestled now within Kakuzu's body, hooked up to his threads and chakra system. His sheer physical capacity impresses her. It requires such precision and such care. Medic nin fail every day at doing what Kakuzu has practiced for decades as a matter of course.

Konan taps her cup on the table. "Don't think so darkly," she says, lightly chiding. It is his one weakness, to get so easily embroiled in these furious moods. "The plan proceeds. We will hold a place in heaven for you."

"Heaven," he says, not angry now, but darkly laughing. "Somehow I doubt that. Konan, the plan is for you and your leader."

"No," she says earnestly, widening her darkened eyes. She reaches across the table and takes his hand, snatches it, nearly. He is so much older than she is and so complex. She would hate to lose that because of pessimism or a misconception. "Don't think that way. Pein has a vision. You would not be here if you were not a part of it."

His eyes flicker, but he doesn't move his hand to take hers, or pull away. Konan holds onto his wrist tightly for another second and then lets go, withdraws.

"And you really believe that," he says, now not laughing or angry but philosophical. All those currents moving under the surface, it's no wonder his partners die. They speak and never know what they're stepping in to. Kakuzu, you've got to watch him, to be as precise as he is and measure his moods like a sailor reading the sky.

She just nods, and now he pulls back, seems to waffle for a minute before slipping a hand into his pocket and shuffling around. "Here," he says, and she blinks at the note he slips into her hand. There's some number marked on it, meaningless to her; it could pay for a katana or a house or the head of a bounty. "Take it."

She does, she looks at it, turns it around a little bit. Her smooth brow furrows and then she takes both hands and starts to fold. She has to double part of the bill because she's so used to working with squares, but other then that it's easy; and she squashes fiercely at the paper until she's folded her usual. Just a simple butterfly.

A spark of chakra animates it. The wings quiver, snatching clumsily at the air; it's smaller than her usual constructs and flimsier, a little more awkward in flight. But fly it does, up towards the light. It circumscribes the ceiling, bobbing wildly, and then shoots towards the window and out into the rainy night.

Kakuzu watches it go with stillness and little concern. Not so valuable, she guesses, or he'd be vexed with her; they must have thousands more where the one came from. Still, an apt demonstration.

"You see," she tells him. That too is freed.

"I see," he says, back to her. Dark-voiced, biting, like something crawled out of the depths, and for a very little while, hers.

Konan smiles at him.

3/27/08.


	5. Hidan: Visceral Love

Genre: Gen  
Warnings: G  
Fandom: Naruto.  
Notes: Hidan and something else. For the 31-day's prompt "visceral love".

* * *

He is far from consciousness when the god first comes. Miles from anywhere, stalked by something silent, coming soundlessly along with him like the flickering afterimages left from staring into the sun.

The forest around him is red-tinted and dark. Choked with humid air, with hunting-dying cries. Red-veined leaves ruffle, no breeze stirring them. There is no glimmer, no chime of falling water. Hidan struggles along lead-footed through the brush. Vines and creepers thwack at his face. Sticky air washes hot over the back of his neck. Something is there, an echo in his footsteps, a hot breath on his nape.

All these warnings. But when the thing he cannot name comes to him it is unexpected, still.

His shadow leaps from his shadow. From the moist nooks under leaves where little bones lie in piles, from the deeper wood-shadows that move and keen beyond his vision. His shadow stinks of life and death, the jam-on-hot-pavement smell of blood. His shadow looks a lot like him. The same tight-muscled shoulders and hooded red eyes. Identical bone-white slicks of hair.

His shadow looks very little like him. The tar-black skin leavened with swoops and dashes of white, the fanged skull-mask overlaying his handsome face. The eyes burn. Hidan knows, knows, that this is the thing he felt following him. He finds himself at an attentive point. There was just diffuse awareness before. Awareness encompassing space unimaginable. And years, years.

He can't find a name for what this thing is. But it brings him to a halt, either way. They stand shoulder to shoulder, facing different directions in that vast and nameless jungle.

Fingers take strong hold of his arm. "Which way," the measured voice inquires, "do you intend to go?"

Hidan does not pull away. He is as still as a bird caught in the hypnotic death-stare of a snake. And under the rapture he revels in it. This thing is awful, and Hidan is duly full of awe.

He does not answer. He can't; his whole body resounds. Just from that light touch.

He does manage to glance, towards the way he was walking before he was met on the path. He traveled that way for no particular reason - it was the way he felt called, was all. And unless something turns him from that path that's the way he'll keep going.

"Deeper into the forest, farther from the surface, closer to death," the thing says. He can't decide what it is. Just the feeling of something scabbed and old, long upon the world.

"You go that way," it continues. "And I'll go the other. And you'll see how you like, and I'll see what I like. It's been a long time, since I've been in the world."

His doppelganger brushes against him smoothly, in the manner of a cat. His skin is hot. Sparks zing where they meet. "But don't go too far," the caution comes. "I will call you back, eventually."

The reek of burning hair: incense. The distant roar of flame: sutra. The chatter of crows: prayer wheels clicking. Small polished bones: sacred relics. Fair foul, and foul, fair.

Hidan melts into that touch. The purest thing he's ever felt, delivered to him by the purest creature: his twin, his shadow, the shadow now casting him. The only real, eternal, permanent thing.

The other loosens his grasp and slides by. Hidan stands under the thick canopy shivering, the name budding in him like a macabre flower: god. _A_ godhead, _the_ godhead. What he just stumbled across, questing through the catacombs and landscapes of his soul. The sunless clouds roil above him, the death-trap grounds still loud below.

(In the outer world, the silent godhead runneth over. A man thought dead heaves to his bloodied feet and lifts his head.)

The jungle pulses around him, flares with lightning-bolts from the depths, bursts that send rod and cone cells shooting to hell. Like the spasms of a birth canal, beginning to work, giving some dark offspring vent into the world.

Holiness rings in him. The godhead, the tongue in his bell; bereft of it he is silent, cold. The godhead, the sun to his moon; without it he reflects no light. With it he reverberates, hums, gives voice to whatever musings the god feels free to visit upon the world.

With it, he gleams.

/end

8/2/08


	6. Kakuzu&Hidan: Many Colors of a Bruise

Genre: Gen  
Warnings: M/R – language, cruelty to animals  
Fandom: Naruto.  
Notes: Kakuzu and Hidan, with apologies to Harlan Ellison. Written for the 31-days prompt "the many colors of a bruise".

* * *

The dog, first, Hidan picks up and holds against the house's front wall. The sober Akita alights with hostility in his hands, swimming giant forepaws at his partner's bare chest, choking out muffled growls and barks. Cut off as Kakuzu comes forward with a kunai and drives it through the bearish dog's throat. Blood rolls hotly through the thick coarse fur on its neck and chest, and almost right away the little front walkway stinks of it. Kakuzu drives his weight against the blade, forcing it through gristle, tendon and flesh, breaking bones as he forces the kunai through the flesh and into the wall. He's strong. It's messy, but not too difficult.

"Fucking mutt," Hidan says, releasing the dog. Its corpse jerks against the wall. "Look what it did to me."

Occupied with wrestling the Akita's forelegs down so he can push kunai through the wrist joints and pin them to the wall in turn, Kakuzu barely glances at the livid red scratches now marring his partner's skin. The legs dealt with, he revisits the kunai in the throat, making sure it's pushed in far enough and will hold the body up against wall. By then the dog is still, dead with its eyes open. Kakuzu wipes his bloody hand off on the brindle fur.

"Are you listening, rag doll?"

Hidan surely knows he isn't - or, well, that he's heard and doesn't care. Feeling suddenly weary Kakuzu rubs at his forehead, smearing the skin below his forehead protector with a crusty swipe of blood. "You have the robes?"

"Yeah." Hidan hands the first to him. An un-slight woman's faded kimono, patterned with ears of wheat. Kakuzu pins it up next to the dog - a kunai through the soft blue collar, through each of the cuffs. Beside him Hidan does the same with a robe that had once belonged to the eldest daughter. Their target has quite the brood - four more robes to pin up after that, two boys and two girls, all decreasing in size.

Kakuzu pins up the last robe, a young boy's so small it could only belong to a child barely out of toddlerhood, if that. Hidan slaps his hands together, glaring at their handiwork. "Fucking waste of time."

Kakuzu sighs and says nothing, because he agrees. He has always found threats pointless, action more effective. If the father had held his family's safety in esteem he wouldn't have made overtures to Akatsuki in the first place, much less taken small steps towards betraying them.

The display of force might balk him temporarily. But the problem will only be solved with his - painful - death. If Pein wasn't actually an incorrigible optimist underneath it all he might accept that, but Kakuzu personally doubts the day will ever come.

"Not like a fucking dog means anything." Hidan picks up his scythe from where it leans against the wall, and then slammed the haft against the wood in a burst of ill temper. "We should just fucking kill the asshole."

"Come on," Kakuzu says. "Find the papers and we can leave."

Midday, all the family is out, father lunching with his partners, drinking too much sake and getting tipsy, mother working hard at the lab, children at daycare or school. The curtains to the master bedroom are pulled, the room dim. Sunlight glimmers warm and gold through the slats in the blinds. Kakuzu turns the desk lamp on and riffles through stacks of paper, the various drawers. Feels for hidden panels. Finds nothing, as expected. Hidan emerges from the closet with one of the wife's good kimonos held to his front. "I'm tho pwetty," he lisps. "Thwow me down the thtairs and fuck me rough, baby."

At Kakuzu's bored stare he roars with laughter and throws the delicate silk in a pile on the ground. Picks it up again and puts it away, unbidden.

Kakuzu leaves the desk and goes to the hall. He'll search the children's rooms, next.

Hidan doesn't follow him to the oldest daughter's room, or the second-born's. Good. The man is just a distraction; Kakuzu works faster without him. He finds the papers in the baby's room, tucked into a storybook and jammed in the corner on the highest shelf. Poorly hidden, but their client couldn't be called imaginative. The whole thing takes him maybe half an hour. That's no concern. He's confident they have time.

Flipping through the packet, everything seems to be in place. He sticks the papers into his briefcase and puts the book back. All that remains is collecting his partner. Hopefully the man hasn't gotten into too much trouble.

Hidan is out in back of the house, in no trouble at all. Just sitting cross-legged at the edge of a small man-made pool, scythe lying on the grass, chin propped in his hands. Almost dreamily, he stares into the quivering waters, but Kakuzu sees his eyes flicker and knows that below the lily pads and frondy plants something moves.

Hidan says nothing nor does he glance up as Kakuzu approaches him. Following his partner's gaze, the Falls-nin catches the rapid slip of piebald scales just below the surface as a koi rolls to eye him.

"Check it out," Hidan says, reaching down and trailing his fingers in the water, once Kakuzu stands across the pool from him.

For a moment nothing happens, as ripples spread from his pale fingers. And then languidly the koi moves from the shadowed waters, rolling again so a spiky fin comes particles away from breaching the water's surface. The round mouth gapes, the round eye stares up. Hidan moves his fingers down the slimy side as the carp slips away from his grasp into the shadows.

"Does it every fucking time." He stares after the fish, gaze piercing whatever reedy den it had retired to. "One of the little snots must have really fucking babied it, seriously."

The children, of course. Kakuzu supposes it was them; he has trouble imagining the besieged wife or the busy oldest daughter coming out day after day to sit on the sunned poolside and tame the koi. Perhaps more than one of the brood had contributed to the training, since the fish came so readily to a stranger's hand; or perhaps it was just hungry. Either way it is a well-loved fish. As much a pet as the dog.

His partner appears so innocent, lounging next to the quiet water. A young, pure icon. So painfully young sometimes. Kakuzu wonders how he can keep it up. Or perhaps it does come naturally. For all his age, Hidan sometimes seems like a very young soul, especially compared to Kakuzu, who every now and again acutely feels the weight of his years pushing down on him. Silent, the pressure as strong as lying on the ocean's bottom.

And then now and again Hidan seems shockingly old, endowed with a leprous, scabrous old soul. Like a sore, weeping, crusted black and red. A mark on the world, refusing to heal.

They are similar, in a way, Kakuzu and his partner. But their differences repel them more than their sameness unites them. They leave different marks on the world, Hidan with his exultation in orgiastic cruelty, random as raindrops. Kakuzu doesn't care enough to work at cruelty, although he has no problem in indulging if the job requires it. It takes more energy than he can be bothered to waste. Hidan is old, but Kakuzu's been alive longer, and he started out in the ocean, where everything was cruel just to live. The sea destroys, too, when its rage bursts free, like his. Which is why Kakuzu recognizes what he sometimes does as cruelty, but prefers a different word: pragmatism. A shark, a sea eagle, the ocean. They are pragmatic. As is he. They do what they must. Hidan is obliged to go the extra mile.

Hidan is smooth like a thing often touched. A white river stone shaped by eons of water and air.

Kakuzu's smoothness - where he is smooth - is like something never touched. Not once.

"Come on," he says.

"Wait." Hidan climbs to his feet, lifting a forefinger and smiling oddly at his partner's irritable gesture. "Just one fucking second. Just one. Seriously."

He reaches down, dabbles his fingertips in the water again and watching him Kakuzu knows what comes. Hidan is avid now, teeth showing through his grin, as out the koi slides. It moves with ponderous grace, as though it carries far more size than it does, and slowly it quests towards the priest's tempting motions.

The water churns and crashes when Hidan plunges his hands down fast. Sharp reflexes, the priest has not; but sharp enough to catch a tame and foolish fish he is. Slime be damned.

His fingers slide under the thick gill-plates. Hidan lifts the fish from the water, unconcerned by its tortured thrashing, the body curving back and forth in perfect arcs. Underneath the protective scales Kakuzu sees the gills, red with blood and spiky like combs. Fins flitter. The round mouth gapes, shuts.

"Fucking catch of the day," Hidan boasts, alight with dangerous excitement. "Pretty, right? Check it out."

Kakuzu has killed many fish in his life. Spurred by hunger, while traversing the ocean he'd sometimes even attack dolphins and small sharks, and as he grew had infrequent run-ins with a few transient orcas. But fish were his staple. Thundering onto them out of the dark, breaking up their tightly packed schools, shredding their tender flesh. They could feel, too, when he wasn't hungry, and moved fearlessly around him then.

Hidan stands with the carp. Water runs from the gill slits, tainted red. His picks up his scythe with his free hand. "Okay," he says, holding the fish out in front of him and grinning with fond malevolence. "Let's blow this fucking Popsicle stand. Let's go."

They walk around the house, this time. In the path between the house's wall and the low wall corralling the estate. Kakuzu doesn't want a trace of their passage left in those walls; it will be far more terrifying for the man to realize how gently they can move, drifting like leaves through his most private spaces, as insubstantial as sunbeams, intruders he'd never know were there but for their consideration in notifying him. The dead dog, the pinned-up robes; they are the signs he wants to leave behind.

He pauses and waits when they get around the house and Hidan looks over their handiwork again. Flies have found the Akita by now. They cluster thickly, fat, shining green and blue, buried in the fur to sip blood and lay their eggs. An ignoble death inflicted upon a noble animal. He'd have preferred to kill the man and leave the dog, born of stock clearly better than its master.

"Got a kunai?"

Kakuzu stills for a moment. Then he reaches in his pouch and finds a blade, silently holds it up for his partner. They'll have to restock soon, he notes. Especially after this.

Hidan takes it from him, walks past the dog, the line of robes. A few flies lift off as he passes and settle again almost immediately.

Next to the youngest child's robe Hidan turns and holds the koi up like he's deciding where to hang a painting. A moment, and he drives the kunai through the fish, just below the tail, so the carp hangs head-down and the robes are thus book-ended between two dead animals.

The fish's mouth still works. The fins still riffle like fans. Muscle surging, goaded by impulses shot from a dead brain. The blood is thick, clotted, very dark.

"Che. Slimy as fuck." Hidan loses interest, turns around and maunders back to his partner. The scythe leaves scuff marks on the honey-colored wood. "We leaving or what?"

They go out the way they came in, hurtling as anonymous shadows over the rough wall, leaving their sign behind. It may be a long time yet before any of the family comes home to see it; under the sloping roof of the home, on the low deck beside the front door, it will shortly smell of the charnel-house and certainly never will be unstained again.

Kakuzu doubts that the father, if he arrives first, will be able to hide any of what occurred from his family. The oldest daughter will probably collect her siblings and herd them home hours before either parent is released from their office. Either way, he feels very little for them. If a dead, beloved dog and a dead, beloved fish are the most horrible things they ever meet in their lives, well - they're lucky.

/end

8.8.08


	7. Kakuzu&Madara: The Taming of Beasts

Genre: Gen

Warnings: T

Characters: Madara, Kakuzu

Notes: Seeling was a real practice for training birds. Inspired by the new databook. Madara brings someone into his cause.

* * *

Madara does not like the coast. It is a place of meeting, a conjunction of many things often enemies to him. Clear air, and wet. His clan loves fire and hiding, so near the water is not his sort of place. Madara does not like the coast and the coast does not like him, which is why he comes here. A thing forced to struggle to grow, fighting for every foot and fingerhold, can never afford weakness; here, by the sea, it is a good place for him to struggle.

He finds himself a flat rock for a seat, and props his fan so it shades his sunburned face from further injury. The wind off the water is strong. It throws his hair into his face, whips the black strands until they snap fiercely at his skin. The bird on his wrist shifts and bates. Madara turns his wrist and the gyrfalcon flaps before regaining its footing on his glove.

He props his elbow on his knee. The tiercel is large and heavy, cocking its head one way to watch him with an eye which is dark and deep against the silvered feathers. He watches its throat pulse with every indrawn breath. A nervous bird, but it settles quickly enough on his hand.

With the fan propped, his other hand is free to catch his hair and quell it. He twists it into a tail and simply pulls it over his shoulder and holds it so it no longer thrashes at his face. The bird bows and wags its tail, fighting for balance in the strong wind. It hunches its shoulders, streamlines itself against the hard gusts coming off the ocean. Madara watches his bird as it reaches up one jessed foot to scratch hard behind its right eye. "Hungry, I hope," he murmurs. "I am as well."

A shadow falls across the barnacled rocks at his feet. Madara had been aware of the other man's approach for some time, and Kakuzu hadn't even tried to conceal himself. Now the man stares down at him from just a few feet away, with those remarkable inverted eyes. "The Lord Uchiha, talking to birds?"

"He can't understand me." Madara pushes to his feet, takes the fan in his free hand, loosing his hair to toss like a live thing once more. "I wasn't speaking to him."

Kakuzu stands, silently, and watches the Lord Uchiha rise. Madara taps the fan against a rock and, saying nothing, turns and begins to make his way down the beach.

The other shinobi catches and keeps pace with him easily. Kakuzu is a large man, a bigger man than Madara's ever met, and what's more, he knows how to put all that bulk to good use. He has size and, more importantly, finesse on his side.

Madara wants that finesse for his own.

Neither one of them says anything for a long while, accompanied only by the rough breathing of the sea, the sometimes-whistling wind. Madara stays silent because he doesn't want to speak first, and Kakuzu - silence is his ground state, he barely notices it. In the end the falcon makes the first noise. A long, harsh cry, and then it bates again, falling off Madara's wrist and hanging upside-down, caught by the jesses.

Madara props the fan against his shoulder, slides the slack through his clenched fist, shortens the ties until the bird can clamber back to its perch on his hand. He can feel the uneasy flex of its talons, even shielded by the worked leather of the glove; the tiercel flares its narrow wings, hunches and cries "kek-kek-kek-kek" into the gusts of air that still plague them. It would be calmer, with a hood, although perhaps still ill at ease from the strong, dark aura of the man pacing alongside them. Still, Madara keeps its vision free, because he likes those eyes, those round, perfect, obsidian eyes, to see everything that there is to see.

"Your bird dislikes the ocean," Kakuzu observes, and Madara laughs. An opening, finally.

"So do I," he says, because he is too impatient to be silent, and although impatience has not done much for him, there is no use hiding things from Kakuzu. The man already knows what Madara wants. "Tell me your answer."

Typically, Kakuzu keeps his own counsel for a while longer. Madara watches him impatiently, looks past him at the long plane of the sea, the sky so blue as to be unreal, the long tufts of cloud smearing across the water. The sun is so bright it hurts his eyes, and the wind is ceaseless. It turns his fan in his grasp, wants to snatch it away from him. His gyrfalcon shifts and shifts.

"I wonder why," Kakuzu says finally, "you feel it best to select madmen and traitors to march under your banner."

The whip-crack of his laughter is sharp and swept hurriedly away by the sea wind. "Madmen," Madara spits, hearing his own melodrama and loving it. "Madmen and traitors. They're the kind of men I like. The only honest men. Psychopaths, sociopaths, zealots and sadists. Those are exactly the kind of soldiers I want. If no one else should take them, why shouldn't they come to me? I know how to use them."

Kakuzu's quizzical sidelong glance says everything. Madara turns his arm, holds the bird in closer to his torso, shielding it from the wind. "You don't like the thought of showing your back to a lot of bandits?"

"I don't like the thought of showing my back to anyone."

Madara lilts a whistle to his bird before answering what's a fair sentiment. "For you, then, the most unsubtle madman I can find."

He's read Kakuzu well enough to recognize his suddenly shuttered eyes as a sign of amusement, and smiles himself, swinging the fan briskly. "In truth," he says, "I don't fear betrayal. Tell me, do you know how a bird is trained?" He swings his wrist around to show his companion the young, mantling tiercel.

Given Kakuzu's silence, he takes it the man hasn't learned.

"We call it seeling." Madara smiles to himself. Shows his smile to the world. "One takes a curved, round needle, and stitches the eyes shut by putting the thread through the lower lid and then taking the thread round the head to pull the lower eyelids closed."

Silence, a moment, and then, "It sounds a delicate act."

"It is." Madara brings the bird close again, enjoying the sight of its piercing hunter's glance up towards him. Not trust, but familiarity, and fealty. "The second, inner eyelid can be damaged by a careless worker, and, oh… many other things can go wrong. You must take care not to damage any part of the eye. Without their eyes, a hawk is of course worthless."

Oh, how he knows the truth in those words.

"A large risk."

"The gain is also great. You see." Delicately, Madara buries his fingers into the chest feathers, scratching gently at his bird's keel.

"A loyal hunter?"

Madara huffs, almost a snort. Not quite. "Loyalty is against their nature. They know who their masters are. That is all."

/end


	8. SakuraSai: Awkward Foreplay

Genre: Romance/Humor

Warnings: T (sex, oral sex implied, threesomes mentioned)

Characters: Sakura/Sai

Notes: Written for porn battle on IJ, although this is rather tame. Prompt was "Sure, Sai, a punch in the face can be considered foreplay…"

* * *

If he didn't stop talking, Sakura was sure she was going to kill him. It was not the most opportune moment to be having those kind of thoughts, and really, the time to back out had come and gone long ago, but Sakura was a stubborn girl and now that the idea had come into her head it was sticking.

"Are you feeling all right, hag?"

Sai smiled down at her eerily. His fine artist's hands were splayed out on her hips, pale and spidery, and there wasn't a trace of a tan line where she _knew_ for a fact that his belly shirt cut off. Sakura didn't bother to restrain herself from rolling her eyes. "I'm fine, Sai."

"Are you quite sure?" His eternally pleasant smile didn't waver a bit. "Because if this is too much for you... well, you wouldn't want to get strained. Perhaps another woman could join us? Miss Beautiful seems amenable enough to my company -"

"Are you seriously asking me for a threesome when _we_ haven't done anything yet?" That was just insulting.

He tilted his head curiously. "It seems a common enough occurrence in the source material I've referenced."

Oh God, and he really meant it, too. Sakura could just picture him briskly plowing through piles of bad romance novels and Icha-Icha specials, arming himself for the rigorous mission ahead of him: successfully pleasuring a normal female. So good at applying abstract concepts to tearing his way through squads of enemy nin, so bad at figuring out... this. Sakura sighed. So maybe the upbringing which had forged him into a nigh-unstoppable assassination machine had something to do with it. But still.

Being those cat-slitted eyes she could tell wheels were turning... oh god, he was gearing up for another suggestion...

Sakura made a snap decision and Sai made a sound of surprise when she looped her hand around the back of his neck and pulled him downwards. "Okay, Sai," she said. "This should be easy for you."

Sai looked up from his intense study of her navel. "You have been brainstorming as well, hag?"

Sakura forced back the compulsive tightening of her fingers around his throat and rolled her eyes upwards again. "Sort of. Look... um, you read about oral sex, right?"

"An intriguing practice," he smiled. "With no reproductive value, but it seems a popular deviation. Go slowly. Swallow, don't spit. Do not thrust into the woman's mouth as you come."

"Sure, Sai." She waved her hand awkwardly towards her nether portions, watching as his gaze followed her gesture and he - _finally_ - got a clue.

She was confident he'd pick the details up quickly. Even if most of his reading had been for the reverse situation. He was a genius-level shinobi, after all.

Anyway, if she had to listen to him talk any more she was going to end up breaking his neck.


	9. KakuYugiHidan: Happy Fun Tent Times

Genre: Humor/Dumb.

Warnings: T+, mentions of sex (a threesome actually!), language.

Characters: Kakuzu/Yugito/Hidan.

Notes: My take on the old using-body-heat-to-warm-each-other-up-while-naked trope. Ridiculously silly, highly amusing to me. SORRY, GUYS.

It was hellishly cold out, and ferry they'd taken had overturned three-quarters of the way across the river. The water was running low, enough for even the non-shinobi travelers to wade the rest of the way across, but it was still chest-deep on Yugito, and she and Hidan lost their packs in the water.

By the time all three of them had gotten out, she was soaked all over, and almost worthless with chill. The best she could do was crouch in the cloak Kakuzu dropped over her and shiver as though her life depended on it, while her partners set up the one remaining pup tent and Hidan bitched relentlessly. She felt terrible. The nekomata was almost catatonic with furious misery and cold. She was barely responsive when Kakuzu hauled her to her shaking legs and dragged her into the tent.

Hidan had somehow got his clothes off already. He'd sort of spread them out as much as was possible to the side of the nest of blankets and the unzipped sleeping bag which remained of their gear. Yugito didn't want to let go of her arms and almost screamed when Kakuzu yanked them away from their stranglehold around her torso and yanked her shirt off over her head.

"What are you doing?" she shrilled, scooting away. It didn't help; there wasn't enough space to get any distance. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered some more.

"You are nearly hypothermic," the falls-nin said irritably, and then cast a more critical eye over her. "Actually, you may presently be hypothermic. Body heat is the best way to warm someone up under these conditions."

"What?!" she shrieked, really screaming this time.

"Shut the fuck up and zip up the door," Hidan snarled from the blankets. "It's fucking freezing out there. You're letting cold air in."

By the end of his speech Kakuzu had her pants half off. From what she could see in the dim light he looked ready to grab her by the scruff and stuff her headfirst into the blankets too. Yugito dug her fingers into her arms and wormed her way under the down cover herself.

Kakuzu slipped in behind her. Yugito worked herself around so she could warily watch Hidan. Under these conditions, facing him was bad; her back to him would be worse. Between them she felt barely any warmth. Hidan wasn't radiating the usual aura of heat; Kakuzu was colder than normal. She resigned herself to a long and frigid night.

///

Forty-five minutes later, it wasn't so bad. She really had warmed up, the compulsive shivering had stopped, and it was eerily cozy, in her spot as the stuffing of a very dangerous sandwich. Yugito had not relaxed enough to uncross her arms from her chest, though. Hidan was still awake and she didn't trust him not to...

Well, whatever.

She was warm, which was nice. The nekomata was aware again and hissing nasty threats in the back of her mind, which wasn't nice, but was quite familiar. It was really getting quite dark outside. As uncomfortable as the situation was, Yugito decided, the best thing to do would probably just be to fall asleep and wait it out. Shinobi did this kind of awkward thing in their line of business all the time. She was traveling with two deadly S-class missing nin, and was no slouch in the field herself – between the three of them they had a ridiculous kill count. They were professional killers. They could all be professionals about this.

She'd really, really almost convinced herself of this, and nearly relaxed enough to fall asleep, when Hidan's hand brushed her side.

That woke her up sharply enough, and she glared at him. It was half impossible to see but she was sure his eyes were at half-mast and that he was laughing at her.

Give him one more chance, she thought; it'd be too stupid to have a confrontation in here. A second later his hand brushed her again, in an entirely too familiar stroke that went from her shoulder down her side, and stopped to rest at her hip.

"Stop touching me," she said, enunciating very clearly.

"What?" Kakuzu said behind her, and Yugito jumped, kind of. He'd been breathing so evenly she hadn't known he was awake.

"Hidan's touching me."

"We're both touching you." He sounded irritated. "It's close in here. Forget about it and go to sleep."

"No - " Hidan's thumb began to rub small circles where her hip-bone dipped, and Yugito stopped for a moment and then continued. "I mean, he's touching me on _purpose_."

"Hey," Hidan said, speaking finally. "Kakuzu, are you hearing this too? This crazy bitch thinks I'm molesting her. Women are so fucking paranoid."

He pinched her, hard. Yugito scooted back, which didn't really help as she ran right up against Kakuzu, who made a very irritated noise. Like a cat that had just been stepped on, supplied the nekomata, and Yugito told it to shut up.

"He's LYING!" she said loudly. "Kakuzu, don't believe him!"

"Do I have to separate you two?" he snapped.

"No way, I don't want your nasty skin all over mine," Hidan said, at the same time as Yugito shrilled "YES!"

"If you two are not quiet in the next five minutes," Kakuzu said very calmly and evenly, "I am going to carry you both outside and you are both going back into the river. For keeps this time. I will personally make sure of it. Now shut up." He gave Yugito a firm push away from him. Reluctantly she shuffled back so she was equidistant from both men and stayed still, glaring at Hidan.

Smirking. He was definitely smirking.

About a minute later, Hidan slid his leg over her body, hooked his heel behind her knee, and tried to pull her closer. Yugito squirmed half-upright and kicked at him. "KAKUZU!" He _had _to have felt that one. Even if he'd somehow missed, or ignored, all the rest.

"I am going to murder you both," Kakuzu said quietly. Yugito heard him take a deep breath to continue and then Hidan butted in.

"Seriously, man," Hidan said, sounding ostentatiously miffed. "What is this? Two guys and a girl, all naked together in a tent, and you're not thinking what I'm thinking?"

Yugito felt herself swell up with panic. Kakuzu was quiet for a minute and then he said, "Hidan."

"Yeah?"

Yugito swallowed hard.

"Save it for some other night."

They were all quiet for a second, and then Hidan laughed, sounding very pleased. "Seriously, rag doll? Wow. I didn't think you still had it in you."

"WHAT," Yugito said, nearly shouting. He was joking. He had to be joking. Just some sick, twisted, perverse joke... yeah.

"Come on, catgirl," Hidan said evilly. "You heard the man. Shut up and go to sleep."

/end

4/18/08.


	10. Kakuzu&Madara: contracting

Every city he ever comes to, he gets a lot of stares. Kakuzu stares back at them all and watches his watchers look away. In a pack of dogs, that would make him boss; humans are a little more complicated, or they pretend to be, at least.

He does a good job sewing himself up in a human skin. It isn't completely seamless, he's covered in seams, in fact, on his face, even, but he can walk and he can talk and he can work and the form works, he's recognized as a human, as something terrible too. He buys a hot roll stuffed with meet and walks barefoot, ignoring whatever squishes nastily between his toes. Odds are he's walked through (and maybe eaten) worse in his already-long life. There's no point in starting to fuss now.

Cart wheels rumble over the cobbles. A young girl offers him peacock feathers, for sale, the blue-flaming centers the same shade as his eyes. Kakuzu presses forward, ignoring her, until she shifts out of the way.

People scream at each other. People scream at him, trying to sell whatever they think he wants. Painted women enveloped in thin silks and sweet scents call down to him from little balconies. "Buying, sir? You buying?"

Kakuzu finds his contact in a rumbled little shack selling kebabs. An man with a hard jaw and eyes spinning red, pulling gobs of meat off the charred sticks. Kakuzu slides into the seat next to him and holds up a finger for the woman to bring him food. His new companion grunts.

"I'll buy you lunch," Uchiha Madara rasps. "It's the least I can do for a new employee."

The woman comes back and Kakuzu puts his finger down with a nod. "It's appreciated," he murmurs.

He's not buying, but he is selling; and Kakuzu's loyalty is, as always, the best commodity he has.


End file.
